George Santayana Quotes And Sayings

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Santayana is popularly known for aphorisms, such as “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, “Only the dead have seen the end of war”, and the definition of beauty as “pleasure objectified”. Although an atheist, he always treasured the Spanish Catholic values, practices, and worldview in which he was raised. Santayana was a broad-ranging cultural critic spanning many disciplines.

The Family Is One Of Nature's Masterpieces.

In Greece Wise Men Speak And Fools Decide.

For A Man Who Has Done His Natural Duty, Death Is As Natural As Sleep.

The More Rational An Institution Is The Less It Suffers By Making Concessions To Others.

It Is Veneer, Rouge, Aestheticism, Art Museums, New Theaters, Etc. That Make America Impotent. The Good Things Are Football, Kindness, And Jazz Bands.

Character Is The Basis Of Happiness And Happiness The Sanction Of Character.

The Passions Grafted On Wounded Pride Are The Most Inveterate; They Are Green And Vigorous In Old Age.

By Nature's Kindly Disposition Most Questions Which It Is Beyond A Man's Power To Answer Do Not Occur To Him At All.

To Be Brief Is Almost A Condition Of Being Inspired.

Bid, Then, The Tender Light Of Faith To Shine By Which Alone The Mortal Heart Is Led Unto The Thinking Of The Thought Divine.

Music Is Essentially Useless, As Is Life.

Friends Need Not Agree In Everything Or Go Always Together, Or Have No Comparable Other Friendships Of The Same Intimacy.

Only The Dead Have Seen The End Of The War.

The Existence Of Any Evil Anywhere At Any Time Absolutely Ruins A Total Optimism.

It Is Easier To Make A Saint Out Of A Libertine Than Out Of A Prig.

Society Is Like The Air, Necessary To Breathe But Insufficient To Live On.

A Conception Not Reducible To The Small Change Of Daily Experience Is Like A Currency Not Exchangeable For Articles Of Consumption; It Is Not A Symbol, But A Fraud.

That Fear First Created The Gods Is Perhaps As True As Anything So Brief Could Be On So Great A Subject.

It Is Always Pleasant To Be Urged To Do Something On The Ground That One Can Do It Well.

Sanity Is Madness Put To Good Use.

Prayer, Among Sane People, Has Never Superseded Practical Efforts To Secure The Desired End.

Philosophers Are Very Severe Towards Other Philosophers Because They Expect Too Much.

Each Religion, By The Help Of More Or Less Myth, Which It Takes More Or Less Seriously, Proposes Some Method Of Fortifying The Human Soul And Enabling It To Make Its Peace With Its Destiny.

To Reform Means To Shatter One Form And To Create Another; But The Two Sides Of This Act Are Not Always Equally Intended Nor Equally Successful.

Intolerance Is A Form Of Egotism, And To Condemn Egotism Intolerantly Is To Share It.

Graphic Design Is The Paradise Of Individuality, Eccentricity, Heresy, Abnormality, Hobbies And Humors.

Nonsense Is So Good Only Because Common Sense Is So Limited.

Knowledge Is Not Eating, And We Cannot Expect To Devour And Possess What We Mean. Knowledge Is Recognition Of Something Absent; It Is A Salutation, Not An Embrace.

The Soul Is The Voice Of The Body's Interests.

The World Is A Perpetual Caricature Of Itself; At Every Moment It Is The Mockery And The Contradiction Of What It Is Pretending To Be.

Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It.

A Child Educated Only At School Is An Uneducated Child.

It Is A Revenge The Devil Sometimes Takes Upon The Virtuous, That He Entraps Them By The Force Of The Very Passion They Have Suppressed And Think Themselves Superior To.

Friends Are Generally Of The Same Sex, For When Men And Women Agree, It Is Only In The Conclusions; Their Reasons Are Always Different.

Life Is Not A Spectacle Or A Feast; It Is A Predicament.

Wisdom Comes By Disillusionment.

A Man's Feet Should Be Planted In His Country, But His Eyes Should Survey The World.

A String Of Excited, Fugitive, Miscellaneous Pleasures Is Not Happiness; Happiness Resides In Imaginative Reflection And Judgment, When The Picture Of One's Life, Or Of Human Life, As It Truly Has Been Or Is, Satisfies The Will, And Is Gladly Accepted.

The Irrational In The Human Has Something About It Altogether Repulsive And Terrible, As We See In The Maniac, The Miser, The Drunkard Or The Ape.

When Men And Women Agree, It Is Only In Their Conclusions; Their Reasons Are Always Different.

It Takes Patience To Appreciate Domestic Bliss; Volatile Spirits Prefer Unhappiness.

Depression Is Rage Spread Thin.

The Wisest Mind Has Something Yet To Learn.

The Dreamer Can Know No Truth, Not Even About His Dream, Except By Awaking Out Of It.

The Dreamer Can Know No Truth, Not Even About His Dream, Except By Awaking Out Of It.

An Artist Is A Dreamer Consenting To Dream Of The Actual World.

To Be Interested In The Changing Seasons Is A Happier State Of Mind Than To Be Hopelessly In Love With Spring.

Never Build Your Emotional Life On The Weaknesses Of Others.

We Must Welcome The Future, Remembering That Soon It Will Be The Past; And We Must Respect The Past, Remembering That It Was Once All That Was Humanly Possible.

Chaos Is A Name For Any Order That Produces Confusion In Our Minds.